To the left is:

Sheltie ( lots of blk) on the left - Mitch
Red Golden Retriever - Joe
Yellow Lab - Kody
Chow, Collie, Husky (Lemon and White bi color) - Kioko
Middle Sheltie (Most white on face) - Patty
Unknown breed (Black in foreground) - Dexter
Sheltie (on the right) - Riley

Spectacle Lake is an HRM owned Park that is a park of much contention - in the past it has been used a lot as a cruising area by men who were "looking for love in all the wrong places" if you know what I mean - and still may be, so you can take that for what it is.  But in 2004-2005 the HRM City Council also decided to build a 4 million dollar "all weather sports field" right in the middle of the park - thereby effectively taking up a huge chunk of urban parkland away from all city users - be they dog-walkers, man-cruisers, family picknickers - and whoever wanted to use Spectacle Lake park on a nice sunny afternoon.

I say that we dog owners should seize what's left of Spectacle Lake Park and take it back as our own!  There is no reason why Spectacle Lake cannot be a fabulous off-leash park - so take your dog, get in the car - and go to Burnside Industrial Park.  Park near the Blue Cross offices on Spectacle Lake Drive - and take your dog for a nice walk that starts in the Blue Cross offices parking lot - it winds around the lake - and let's take back this park - from the all weather sports field - and from the men with their Tim Horton's coffee cups! haha!

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Here is what I used to say about Spectacle Lake in previous versions of this page:

Spectacle Lake is in the Burnside Industrial Park In Burnside which is in Dartmouth.

I was there picking something up from somewhere so I thought I would check out the Spectacle Lake park.  You just park on the street and go into the park.

I would not go there again.  I was there during a week day.  There were lots of cars parked on the street, but there was no one visible in the park, except for a steady stream of men walking in or out with Tim Horton's cups in their hand.

It looks like a nice park, with a map at the entrance that looks like it's geared towards children, but I definitely would not take a child there in the daytime during the week.  Maybe it's different on the weekends, but I was more creeped out there than I have been anywhere else in the whole of the Halifax Regional Municipality.  As soon as I figured out what was going on, me and Charlie beat it out of there as fast as possible.

If you have had a positive experience there, please email me and let me know I am all wrong about this place.

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August 2004:

I HAVE had several emails from dog-walkers saying that they DO take their dogs to Spectacle Lake and that it's a GREAT place to walk their dogs!  You just have to get through all the silliness of the men/ignore the men/there isn't such a big problem/they haven't really noticed a problem.  They also say that if more people walked their dogs there maybe the man problem would get better.  I have to say that Seaview Park has the same problem, but they stay in their cars there because of the dogs - so that may be true!

Here's some quotes from some of the emails I've gotten:  I had an email from Heather where she said "To tell you the truth I've been hiking at testicle , oops I mean spectacle
lake for years.   Yup, there's an awful lot of the gay man naughty going on there.   The weekends are actually worse than through the week.   At least during the week, a lot of the drive by traffic is people attending their business and work.   On the weekend however, it is nothing more than a gay man's paradise.

Here's the thing though,   the fellas only use the first part of the park. If you enter the trails up closer to the blue cross building beside the chain link fence, there is a dirt road that takes you into the areas that are best.   The fellas, like I said only use the first of this road.   If you continue up far enough it will take you to the left and deep into the woods to a great hiking trail.   The whole loop is approximately and hour and half.

The police know about this "problem" as well but however can't charge anyone unless you actually catch them.   So here's the deal.   The more people that know about this park and use it more often, the more that the gay men will be uncomfortable because there is too much traffic in the park for them to do the nasty.   So we try to get more people to use the trail to help stop the problem.    But as a gal going to that park, I don't feel in too much danger because it's not me they're looking for."

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